BOSTON — Putting a post-mortem on his team's first-round series with the Red Wings on Saturday evening, a five-game relative breeze of a series capped by a 4-2 victory on home ice, Bruins coach Claude Julien was asked if he had a major concern before Game 1.

"Not really," the coach said. "I think, the only thing was the fact that before the series started we had the flu bug going around and we were missing seven guys [from practice] one day. You kind of looking at the days go by and you're wondering how much time you will have to prepare your team for this series.

"But I don’t think I was worried about what we had personnel wise, I was worried about what we had health wise."

It's rather telling when Worry No. 1 on the mind of a coach, the people who are paid to think about every detail, matchup and the adjustments to the adjustments is a high fever for a few of his players.

Of course, it's easy to say the flu was the top concern — and for the record, Patrice Bergeron, Loui Eriksson, Matt Bartkowski and Kevan Miller were all among the afflicted — after the Bruins sauntered past the Wings the last four games. If not for Pavel Datsyuk's wonderful Game 1 goal, this could have been a sweep.

At full health, the Bruins simply had better players, and certainly more players in or around the prime of their careers. The better goalie than the leaky Jimmy Howard sealed it.

The Bruins' four centers are David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron, Carl Soderberg and Gregory Campbell. They're 27, 28, 30 and 28 years old, respectively. On Saturday, all four of their lines contributed in a professional close-out performance.

The Wings simply had too many players who haven’t seen enough winters, and several more who have seen too many.

Add in Milan Lucic (25) scoring a goal and an assist and drawing a penalty Saturday, Loui Eriksson (28) finishing on the power play and providing shorthanded minutes and Tuukka Rask (27) keeping the Bruins ahead when the Red Wings pushed in the third period, and the Bruins had a fully loaded tank in a new car.

There are a couple old cowboys on the Bruins. Neither is looking it right now. Zdeno Chara (37) and Jarome Iginla (36) stay in top shape and have no major injuries holding them back. Chara did his usual work, scoring two goals with defense against Pavel Datsyuk and Co. Iginla’s hard-hat work paid off when he scored in the 94th minute of Game 4, not usually a time for hockey’s senior citizens.

In Hockeytown, injuries decimated the roster. Jonathan Ericsson never played in this series, Daniel Alfredsson was a shell of himself and Henrik Zetterberg missed the first three games.

A 23rd straight playoff berth was sealed by a group of baby-faced rooks, names like Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar inserting themselves into the NHL world. Their presence and performance this season bodes well for a Detroit franchise that’s in desperate need of fresh blood, now six years removed from a fourth Stanley Cup in 12 years.

That did little for them against the hardened, well-trained Bruins. Nyquist and Tatar combined for fewer points than Rask in the series. Nyquist terrorized the Bruins with a breakaway goal April 2, then didn’t score another goal the rest of the season.

That left Datsyuk to carry the load. He scored three goals, but another 10 was needed. The Bruins had too many players in their prime that know what it takes.